PhD Students

Terry McGibbon

Terry is a PhD student in the Department of Psychology. His research focuses on human memory and forgetting in the general population and in disorders such as epilepsy. A particular area of focus is Accelerated Long-term Forgetting (ALF), a memory disorder where new information is initially learnt and retained normally, but then forgotten at an accelerated rate over a period of hours to weeks. He also practises Open Science, ensuring his scientific research is accessible to all levels of society and making his methods, tools, and results freely available to others. Terry uses online methods to make participation accessible to anyone, anywhere, at anytime.

E-mail: t.mcgi001@gold.ac.uk

Pedro Douglass-Kirk

Pedro is undertaking a PhD researching the use of music as an aid for stroke rehabilitation. His current research focuses on upper limb rehabilitation with a core focus on quality of movement. Self-selected favourite music is used to provide real-time feedback rewarding high quality movement patterns and punishing poor quality movement patterns. The research is being undertaken in collaboration with stroke rehabilitation experts from the National Hospital of Neurology and Neurosurgery in London.

Diego Nardi

Diego is a second year PhD student funded by the Department of Psychology and supervised by Professor Fiona Gabbert and Dr Ashok Jansari. In carrying out research on applied memory, he has worked on projects linked to cognitive and social aspects involved in investigative interviewing, eyewitness memory, and suggestibility. The overall aim of Diego’s work is to gain a better insight into the underlying cognitive processes required to eyewitnesses and victims during an investigation, and thereby improve the quality of the evidence provided. His PhD research investigates how individual differences in key cognitive abilities correlate with the performance of eyewitnesses in relevant tasks. In particular, Diego is working on the development of a battery of tests that can be used as a screening tool to identify witnesses who are most likely to be able to provide either reliable or unreliable evidence and make accurate or inaccurate identifications.

Claudia Pulcini

Claudia is a Psychology PhD student under Ashok’s supervision. Her research is on face recognition, and specifically on Prosopagnosia, the inability to recognise faces. One line of her research will focus on comparing the Developmental and the Acquired variant of the condition. Her PhD is also investigating a condition known as Aphantasia, and how mental imagery abilities may vary across the face recognition spectrum, from Prosopagnosia up to Super Recognition. Another area of research will be a qualitative investigation into the experience of Developmental Prosopagnosics in childhood, with the final aim of developing more sensitive children’s face recognition tests to diagnose the condition at an earlier age.

Chun Lim Pan

Chun Lim is an international student from Malaysia about to start his PhD under Ashok’s supervision. He is currently interested in using JEF© to explore the bilingual advantage. He aims to use JEF© to identify if bilinguals have a cognitive advantage over monolinguals.

Madison Taylor

Madison has recently graduated from her MSc in Forensic Psychology at Goldsmiths University. She is hoping to conduct PhD research under the supervision of Dr Ashok Jansari using the Jansari assessment of executive functions. She is interested in investigating the connection between traumatic brain injury and executive functions in ex-offenders.